Indeed a "just and lasting" peace can be established only between "contemporary" partners who abide by recognized international norms , not between partners who live in different "historical time zones" and apply different if not contradictory rules of international conduct .
Right from the day he signed the Oslo agreement in 1993 , Arafat did not hide that he would evade his obligations : thus only one day after the White House ceremony , in a speech delivered in Durban , South
Africa , he compared the document to the treaty prophet Muhammad signed with Mecca authorities less than a year before conquering the city at saber’s point . Arafat’s code of conduct does not jibe with modern international law . Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994 , he continued to tolerate if not encourage terrorism and militant Islamic fundamentalist organizations . He acted as a dictator behind some democratic trimmings . He used double talk ,saying one thing in Arabic and the contrary in English . He covered up corruption when he did not himself participate in it . He continued to teach hatred of Jews in his schools and fund his own "hit groups" . He established military courts that sentenced people to death in summary trials without attorney and right to appeal . Instead of offering counterproposals to the plans presented by the former U.S. president in the summer of 2000 , he launched a second Intifada and approved of suicide-bombings ; and so on .
To an Iranian , like me , Arafat’s conduct presents nothing new . In the 1970s he had trained Iranians in his terrorist camps in Lebanon and helped Khomeini gain power in Iran . He lent the PLO representative in Paris to the old Iranian cleric : Ghotbzadeh became the spokesman of the ayatollah in exile and his foreign minister in Tehran . Palestinian "fighters" participated in the demonstrations against the shah’s regime . In 1979 they were around the mullahs , in charge of security in the ministries and other public buildings . Arafat himself was the first foreign "dignitary" to visit and kiss the hand of the ayatollah before joining forces with Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran ! The man is no statesman . He is an incorrigible opportunist and trouble-maker .
Nevertheless , I was non-plussed by the President’s appeal to get rid of him . It is up to the Palestinians themselves to throw Arafat to the dustbins of history and chose more dignified and worthwhile leaders . What we can and should do is to offer them and the world a real and complete evaluation of the man who failed his people and brought to them , as well as to many others (Lebanese , Iranians , Western and Israeli civilian victims of his terrorist acts ) misery and blood bath .
That said , one must own that President Bush’s Middle East speech contained some very important and new points . Indeed , as he affirmed , "For the sake of all humanity , things must change in the Middle
East " and "A Palestinian state will never be created by terror . It will be built through (democratic) reform " . If the U.S. succeeds in such an endeavor , the Middle East would witness the birth of the first Arab state that could provide rule of law, freedom, equality , opportunity and the "good life" to its citizens
But can the U.S. succeed ? The odds are far from being optimistic . Already , Arafat and his entourage are thumbing their noses . The old man will probably be reelected by the Palestinians and will continue his autocratic rule , no matter what the U.S. and the international community say and do . To achieve peace and democracy in the region , a change in leadership is anyway far from enough . A change in the mindsets of the people is as much , if not more ,important and necessary !
Arafat has backers among the people and leaders of the Arab world . It is not for nothing that the Egyptian and Syrian presidents and the Jordanian and Saudi kings insist on keeping him at the helm of a future Palestinian state . Indeed the interminable reign of all these and other Arab dictators would be threatened by a successful Arab democratic experiment . Such an achievement would also sound the death knell of Iraq’s Saddam , Iran’s mullahs , Pakistan’s generals and ,of course , al-Qaeda , Hamas , Hezbollah and other militant Islamic fundamentalist groups all over the planet ! The Muslim world which came to a naught in the middle ages because of the triumph of fundamentalist clerics allied to Caliphs and Sultans and their military establishments , will at last resume its march toward progress . Clerics and militaries would loose their grip on believers and Bazaar merchants would be forced to join the real of modern global trade .
Too beautiful a vision to become reality ? Delusion ? I don’t want to sound pessimistic and to play the nay sayers . But , such yearnings existed (and continue to exist) in the Arab and Muslim worlds since the second half of the 19th century . Reform and modernization were on the mind of many Muslim intellectuals and even some clerics . Thus , Jamaladdin Afghani and Muhammad Abdoh (who became at the turn of the 20th century grand Mufti of Egypt) were in Paris in the 1870s . Afghani met and discussed at length with the French historian and philosopher Ernest Renan . Both Afghani and Abdoh were convinced that Islam should reform and integrate modern science . Both called for changes in political and social organization of the Muslim world . Upon their return to Egypt ,they nevertheless somehow abandoned their reformism ideas . In February 1879 , Afghani published an article entitled "Despotic Government" in which he analyzed different types of political organization , including the republican and constitutional ones . While recognizing the superiority of "democratic" rules , he concluded that the Muslim world was not ready for these "highest forms of government" for the following reasons : its long experience under despotism ; the rule of superstition rather than reason ; and its opposition to and ignorance of the "true" sciences . Afghani affirmed that the "best" for which Muslims could "presently " hope is a "benevolent , enlightened , paternalistic " despotism which would introduce the new scientific and technological knowledge of the West and a "more humane" form of government .
One hundred years , day for day , after the publication of Afghani’s article ,in February 1979 , Khomeini overthrew the shah ,promised total democracy , obliterated all his modernist reforms and created an Islamic theocracy . Fifteen years after the Iranian ayatollah’s success , the Oslo agreement offered the rule of the West Bank and Gaza to Yassir Arafat , in the hope that a democratic Palestinian state will emerge and peace will come to the Middle East . Instead a new dictatorship and more violence engulfed the region .
Can democracy ever takes root in the Middle East and the Muslim world without a change in the mindset of the people and their leaders ?
fereydoun hoveyda , June 27,2002 .
(senior fellow , National Committee on American Foreign Policy . Former Iranian ambassador to the UN. Author of The Broken Crescent.The Threat of Militant Islamic Fundamentalism ,Praeger 1999)